The writings, sayings, and works of one of the most Solomonic individuals to grace history's stage.

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Monthly Archives: September 2014

Journal entry, 9/14/14: President Justice Minotaur asked that the following be added to the official minutes of the one hundred and third annual meeting of the International League of Fire Tenders:

Let the minutes reflect that Prince Henry the Navigator was also present at the meeting and is a member of the Lodge. Mr. Navigator was manacled in a dog catcher’s van in the parking lot but the proceedings were relayed to him in a crude sign language by a Boy Scout eager to earn service hours. At the time the meeting was adjourning, Navigator broke free from his fetters and killed the driver of the van, the Scout, and Participatory Shelves with a mailbox that he (Navigator) had pulled out of the cement. Using his executive power, Minotaur replaced Shelves, who had been appointed to a special committee assigned to look into selling camel rides, with Brian Hallelujah.

One hundred and third annual meeting of the International League of Fire Tenders, September 13, 2014. Meeting commenced at 11:30 p.m. Meeting called to order by President Justice Korbin Minotaur. Present:

Minutes of prior meeting had been lost but were nevertheless approved by unanimous vote.

President Minotaur rebuked Mr. Crunch for wearing a T-shirt bearing the words “Don’t hate me because I like sharp cheddar.”

Mr. Hallelujah inquired as to the location of the Lodge’s hand-cranked ice cream maker. No one could remember that there was one. After further thought, Hallelujah apologized for having brought up the issue. He remembered that the ice cream maker was something he had lost in his recent divorce and was not relevant to the Lodge.

Mr. Schule reminded the men that “hard drugs” are illegal but said that if anyone needed “a source” he could provide one. Minotaur asked that the comment be deleted from the minutes.

Discussion of “dire” funding situation. Possibility of selling camel rides at New Salem Halloween Festival broached. Committee formed of Lambson, Shelves, and Willis. To report at special meeting September 20, 11:30 p.m., at League Lodge.

Journal entry, 9/5/14: Justice Minotaur went grocery shopping today at Dinkerson’s Fresh Mart and Loan. Accompanying him were Mr. Cornwall and Minotaur’s old law clerk Geronimo Housekeeper, currently a longsnapper in the Canadian Football League. When Minotaur observed that some of the items in the dairy section were beyond their printed expiration dates, he sprang into action like a man several decades younger. Moving swiftly into the employees-only section of the store, he found the intercom and in a disguised voice called for all those in the store holding the rank of Eagle in the Boy Scouts to surreptitiously form an Eagles’ Nest in the area where shoelaces are displayed. Cornwall could observe several shoppers, evidently Eagles, hurriedly trying to respond to the call but none of them could find the shoelace section. Reaching the same conclusion, Minotaur moved slyly to the intercom again and asked the Eagles to assemble by the light bulbs. Again, much activity but the Eagles could not find the light bulbs. This continued about two hours, with the Eagles not being able to find olives, canned lard, shoe polish, “foods of Francophone influence” (there is no such section in Dinkerson’s), and a number of other items called out by Minotaur. Finally in a moment of clarity, Minotaur commanded the Eagles, now visibly winded, to meet at the dairy section itself, but “nonchalantly so as to not attract attention.” Once they were gathered into a nest, as it were, they recited the Scout Oath and Law and then moved against the offending products, with one of the men crying out, “For Akela!” (By this time Housekeeper had walked to the bus station and bought a ticket back to Winnipeg.) In a frenzy of activity that was not limited to the dairy section alone they gathered three jugs of expired 2% milk, a block of blue cheese (there was nothing wrong with it but the Eagles thought it was spoiled cheddar), a pack of tortillas that reportedly had only nine tortillas instead of the promised ten, and a black banana, and disposed of all these in the box crusher in the back of the store. Feeling that this haul was not sufficient to justify all the energy the Eagles had expended, Minotaur then ordered the troops to do away with all sauces in the store, after which roughly four thousand jars of ketchup, mayo, barbecue sauce, salad dressing, salsa, and other sauces were force-fed to the box crusher, whose appetite never appeared to become satiated but which began to seep a disgusting mixture of fluids and solids like a knight lanced in the bowels after eating a shepherd’s pie. Minotaur then dismissed the Eagles with a crisp salute and they all retreated whence they had come.

On the ride home, as he chugged a drinkable yogurt, Minotaur confessed that he had received his Eagle rank only by correspondence when he was twenty-seven. “I did it that way so they didn’t know how old I was. Even then, they wouldn’t give you the Eagle if you were over eighteen.” Minotaur then opined: “If Baden-Powell had ever been able to marshal one hundred properly uniformed boys he could have singlehandedly defeated the German army, but he never got to prove it because some of his brats would never tuck their shirts in.”

With this post, Justice Minotaur is pleased to inaugurate a new department on this blog. The department is and shall be called “Children’s Corner,” suggesting a quiet haven for innocent babes to learn and perhaps be just a bit entertained in this world that can sometimes be gloomy. These offerings will be dictated by Justice Minotaur to Mr. Cornwall. Though Minotaur has spent the minimum time with children possible during his long life, he feels he is well suited to write this material because he has experience with the young of several different species of farm animals. The first installment follows.

My dear children, come and listen to your friend, Mr. Justice Minotaur. You have heard of ants, I assume? These are the little six-legged creatures, oh, so tiny, that we see dashing about this way and that in the summertime. One of my friends, Little Timmy, was not careful around ants. By his home there was a huge ant pile, one of those where literally thousands of these little automatons make their home in dark and forbidding underground tunnels, where secrets go to die. Timmy knew the pile was there but went on about his life with little care. One day Little Timmy fell asleep while eating a sandwich on his back porch. In his dream he had the sensation he was being carried about hither and yon. He awoke to find this was true! This army of ants–as impressive as the forces of Napoleon at the height of his victories–had transported his little frame across the yard, and now his head was completely buried in their city of sand! Oh, the horror! Little Timmy was able to extricate himself from this situation, but not without deep psychological cuts that shall never heal. Oh, my friends, turn from the poor example of Timmy–yea, flee!

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